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. 2025 Jul;35(5):e70061.
doi: 10.1002/eap.70061.

Aspen impedes wildfire spread in southwestern United States landscapes

Matthew P Harris  1 , Jonathan D Coop  1 , Jared A Balik  1 , Jessika R McFarland  1 , Sean A Parks  2   3 , Camille S Stevens-Rumann  4
Affiliations

Aspen impedes wildfire spread in southwestern United States landscapes

Matthew P Harris et al. Ecol Appl. 2025 Jul.

Abstract

Aspen (Populus tremuloides) forests are generally thought to impede fire spread, yet the extent of this effect is not well quantified in relation to other vegetation types. We examined the influence of aspen cover on interpolated daily fire spread rates, the relative abundance of aspen at fire perimeters versus burn interiors, and whether these relationships shifted under more fire-conducive atmospheric conditions. Our study incorporated 314 fires occurring between 2001 and 2020 in the southwestern United States and a suite of gridded vegetation, topography, and fire weather predictor variables. We found that aspen slows fire progression: as aspen cover on the landscape increased, daily area burned and linear spread rate decreased. Where aspen cover was <10%, daily fire growth averaged 1112 ha/day and maximum linear spread was 2.1 km/day; where aspen exceeded 25%, these values dropped to 368 ha/day and 1.3 km/day. Aspen also serves as a barrier to fire spread, demonstrated through a higher proportion of aspen cover at fire perimeters than in burn interiors. Finally, though favorable fire weather conditions increased fire growth rates, differences between aspens and conifers persisted. Our results affirm that aspen stands can act as a firebreak, with clear applications for vegetation management. For example, interventions that shift conifer to aspen cover could lessen the risk of fire for nearby values at risk (e.g., communities, infrastructure) but still support forest ecosystem function. Further, wildfire-driven conversion from conifer to aspen forest types in some landscapes may produce a negative feedback that could dampen expected increases in fire activity under a warmer and drier climate.

Keywords: broadleaf forest; climate change; conifer forest; fuel treatment; green fuel break; quaking aspen; resilience; stabilizing feedback; wildfire.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

Figures

FIGURE 1
FIGURE 1
Study area in the southwestern United States, showing forested EPA Level III Ecoregions and sampled fires occurring between 2001 and 2020.
FIGURE 2
FIGURE 2
Illustration of how daily fire spread metrics were calculated, using the 2002 Hayman Fire in Colorado as an example: (A) final fire perimeter and daily MODIS fire detections, (B) day‐of‐burning (DOB) interpolations from MODIS fire detections, (C) area burned in each DOB (in hectares), and (D) rasterized linear spread (in meters); the maximum daily value was then assigned to all pixels within that DOB patch.
FIGURE 3
FIGURE 3
(A) Aspen cover and (B) interior versus perimeter pixels sampled for an example fire—the 2001 Battlement fire in Colorado.
FIGURE 4
FIGURE 4
Relationships between aspen cover and (A) daily area burned (in hectares) and (B) maximum daily linear spread (in meters). Model fits represent fires with any aspen present (blue), greater than 5% aspen cover (purple), and greater than 10% aspen cover (orange). The highest aspen cover in a day‐of‐burning (DOB) patch was 86%.
FIGURE 5
FIGURE 5
Box plot of fire perimeter effect (FPE) for each cover type across all fire events, depicting the median and distribution of FPE values (**p < 0.001; *p < 0.05; ns, p < 0.1).
FIGURE 6
FIGURE 6
The aspen fire perimeter effect (FPE) by day‐of‐year.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

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